Lost Chances
by ZAPBETH
Summary: AU. There's a world full of possibilities residing in those topaz eyes.


It's been a while since I wrote anything for Twilight, but I had outlined this little thing a few months back. I just decided that I would actually finish it, instead of obsessing over Glee and Klaine like I have been for way too long. Anyway, I would love any reviews (even if this isn't really that great).

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><p>When I first moved to Forks to live with my father, Charlie, I thought it was a dead end full of rain-filled potholes and the over-green foliage. When I began my first day at Forks High School, I thought it completely devoid of possibilities and potential. Luckily for me, I was proven wrong, and the idea of possibilities filled my thoughts for weeks.<p>

The day had started normally enough, even though some of the guys seemed a bit too eager to help me find my next class. In each class, I got the teacher to sign the slip of paper and then found my seat promptly, trying to avoid unnecessary attention. I failed in my attempts, however, and by the time that lunch came around and I was seated with girls who seemed nice enough and boys earlier described, I thought I had had enough eyes gazing on me to last a lifetime.

I had been trying to engage in conversation when I noticed them walking in. The tall, muscular Emmett and the breathtaking Rosalie. The lithe Alice and the brooding Edward. And then he entered. He had the shaggy curly hair that fell to his eyes and lips that I almost ached to address me. It wasn't just the body that his clothes subtly emphasized; it wasn't the way he almost seemed to float past. I was convinced the first time I ever saw him that there was a world full of possibilities residing in those topaz eyes. When I caught his eyes resting on me for a moment, I knew that there had to be something different, special about him.

I breathlessly asked Jessica what his name was, and I ignored her raised eyebrows and smirk. His name was said with almost a reverence, but she quickly followed it with the announcement that he and the pixie Alice were very involved.

This jolted me from my outlandish thoughts. Jasper had a very, very beautiful girlfriend, who eased into his arm when it was placed around her. The Cullens were so secluded from everybody, at their own separate table as though they were trying to protect themselves from the outside world. No matter what I tried, I couldn't tear my gaze away from them.

After that first lunch, I trudged to my Biology class where mercifully I was given a station without a lab partner, and I quickly settled into the routine of trying to avoid the attention of my peers.

It became a drug, spying on Jasper during lunch. I dreaded every sunny day, picking up on the pattern after a few absences from school. Sometimes when I got up, feeling like all I wanted to do was to snuggle deeper into the blankets and fall back asleep, the idea of those possibilities in those topaz eyes threw back the covers and flung me out into the day.

Alice and Jasper were inseparable. They were always touching in some way, fingers grazing and eyes meeting. I waited and waited, thinking that one day if I kept staring, those eyes would fall on me again. Plus it didn't hurt that he was very easy on the eyes.

Then one day, halfway through my senior year, a year of spying and staring, they were gone. They had vanished, and when I asked my father about Dr. Cullen's absence at the school, he mentioned vaguely that the doctor had quietly resigned a few weeks prior. When I inquired further into the matter, Charlie admitted that he knew little about it, and I left it, knowing when I had to be content with what I had gotten.

The first time I had seen him, I had been convinced that another world entirely existed in those tormented, topaz eyes, and they were burned into my memory. Even weeks after their disappearance from life in Forks, I could still clearly see their color, their shape, the way they drooped to stare at the floor for brief moments. I had never talked to him. I had never actually talked to any of the Cullens, but I knew from the first moment, they lived in a different world than I did. Their world could not consist of cooking a small dinner for two people or of thinking a little too deeply about how much time that night's homework would take. Such beauty could not live in the same, bland world as I did.


End file.
